


Eternally Yours

by hellgodsrus



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, No Harrow the Ninth Spoilers (Locked Tomb Trilogy), Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Some angst, Vaginal Fingering, far too many bone names, they are HORNY and IN LOVE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:26:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26390374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellgodsrus/pseuds/hellgodsrus
Summary: For all the many things she could say about Gideon Nav - her hideous sense of humour, the way sheneverlistened, her tendency towards stupefyingly boneheaded violence as the solution to every problem - there was no denying that give her something purely physical to do and she would generally execute it with an efficient and brutal grace that was remarkable to behold, if only for the damage she left in her wake.Which is why it was mystifying what an absolute botch she was making of getting undressed.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 14
Kudos: 201





	Eternally Yours

**Author's Note:**

> I finished Gideon the Ninth the other week and this universe won't leave me alone, its characters keep following me down dark alleyways in my mind and beating me up until I write things about them. I haven't finished Harrow the Ninth yet, so that might make this piece entirely ridiculous, but I read so many of the 'Gideon and Harrow actually get a chance to have sex' fics and I had to write one of my own. So here it is. 
> 
> So, so many thanks to Anna, my bestie who introduced me to this series and who betaread this mess, and to my beautiful fiancee (Taylor) and my beautiful girlfriend (Jess).

For all the many things she could say about Gideon Nav - her hideous sense of humour, the way she _never_ listened, her tendency towards stupefyingly boneheaded violence as the solution to every problem - there was no denying that give her something purely physical to do and she would generally execute it with an efficient and brutal grace that was remarkable to behold, if only for the damage she left in her wake.

Which is why it was mystifying what an absolute botch she was making of getting undressed. 

Harrow watched in a kind of confused stupor as Gideon - who she’d seen carve through a hideous bone construct in brilliant neuron flashes of her mind that had been _dazzling_ to be inside, who could do one armed pull-ups, and loud clapping push-ups, and other irritating things like catching collapsing ditzy, dying, deadly Seventh necromancers - wrenched again at the robe that had somehow wrapped itself around her head and one arm on the journey up her body. 

From the muffled noises underneath the robe, Gideon was just as astounded. And irritated. 

“Griddle, I am not letting you rip that robe in half. I will not have you - gallivanting around without proper clothing.” 

From somewhere inside the mess of black fabric, Gideon’s face emerged, blunt and red. There was a smear of face paint left under one eye, a quarter-inch of blurred ocular socket, some mix of maxilla and zygomatic that hadn’t even been applied that well to begin with. “Yeah. Wouldn’t want _anyone_ thinking you were dragging your cav into bed, ripping her clothes off and - ” 

“ _Griddle_.” Harrow set her mouth in a thin line - or more of one, anyway. She didn’t look at herself much in mirrors, but she knew that the main skill of her mouth was its ability to be a variety of thin lines, labial arteries pinching tight in the small expanse of flesh between her skin and her teeth. “Take the robe off _now_ , or I will summon skeletons to _help_ you take it off.” 

Gideon got her robe off. In the near-darkness, her eyes were just a shadowed edge of gold. “Harrow, I swear, if you bring a single skeleton or - or weird bone thing into this, I’m not laying a hand on you.” 

A small part of Harrow thought _good_ , and almost reached for the ring on the proximal phalange of her pinkie finger, because Gideon _shouldn’t_ be touching her. She didn’t deserve to have those hands pull her close, to fist her own hands in the soft red of Gideon’s hair and worship at the hollow of that gorgeous throat. 

But ultimately, Harrow was a horrible, selfish person; a _nightmare bone lady_ as a thirteen year old Gideon - _bruises on corner of the mouth, eyes bright and wide and teeth bared and already unfairly tall and muscular enough that that tallness didn’t look wrong on her_ \- had once said. So instead of turning the right maxillary bicuspid set into the ring into a full construct and letting this shift into the easy familiarity of hurling insults and blows at each other, she instead pulled open the corner of the covers and shifted back against the pillows, the tendons in her neck taut and jumping. “Get in.” Then, for the sake of it, she added, “Idiot.” 

Gideon, who was still wearing trousers and a bandeau that showed every inch of those horrid, gorgeous muscles, all tensed and _there_ , snorted and made a face. “Yes, oh osseous princess. Let’s ignore the fact that you’re still _totally clothed_.” 

This, like many of Gideon’s more melodramatic statements, was a lie. Harrow was in her nightdress. She would admit, however, that her nightdress did look to an untrained eye rather like some of her lighter robes. 

It didn’t feel like it though. She felt horribly exposed, sitting upright against the pillows with her thumbs pressed tight against her thighs as Gideon slipped onto the bed and knelt next to her. Even with her facepaint on - she hadn’t fully taken it off and had, after the decision had been made to _do this_ , hastily applied a little more while in the bathroom. Not one of the full, funereal Ninth House skulls, but enough that she hadn’t wanted to scream _quite_ so much when seeing herself out of the corner of her eye in the mirror. 

“Hey.” Gideon’s voice was rough but low, soft, matching the touch of her hand as it wrapped round Harrow’s shoulder, pressing against the flat of her scapula. “Hey, Nonagesimus.” There was a little stutter to her words and for a moment all that brash confidence had fallen away from her and there was something soft in the amber of her gaze, small and afraid, and Harrow felt bile rising in her throat, her oesophagus contracting, because she knew she deserved that nervousness, that fear - 

Then Gideon’s hand slipped up from her shoulder, calluses brushing the points of her clavicle. Cupped her face. Harrow was afraid she’d slice Gideon open, the flesh and tendon of her pressed against zygomatic bone and too-thin flesh, her thumb brushing Harrow’s lips. 

“Gideon,” she whispered, and Gideon pulled their faces together and kissed her. 

They did not fit together neatly. Harrow’s face was too much of a sacrificial knife for that. Her nose bumped Gideon’s, and Gideon tried to pull back but Harrow _would not let her_ \- there would be _no_ escape attempt number eighty-seven. Their teeth clacked from the force of it. 

She couldn’t stop Gideon pulling back then, but she came _back._ Wonder of wonders, Gideon came back to her. Why? Why couldn’t Gideon see that her grasping heart would never let Gideon go if she came back? Lips pressed to hers again, moving, the grazing hint of teeth on Harrow’s lower lip and a sound in the back of her throat better than any hymn. 

And Harrow drank it all down, down in her greed, hands clawing at her own thighs because there was no universe where Harrowhark Nonagesimus deserved this happening to her. 

The covers lifted a little as Gideon’s other hand slid under them to rest on the ship-prow of her hip, and Harrow trembled at it. The pair of them slipped down, the mass of Gideon over her, her tongue sliding against Harrow’s own and Harrow moaned, low and needy, breaking the kiss to press another to the body of that beautiful mandible structure she could feel just on the edge of her mind. Felt, just barely, the startled stutter of lungs behind that ribcage as Gideon gasped, “Fuck, Harrow - ” 

Then, Gideon stopped. 

Harrow had a sudden, horrible instant where she thought maybe Gideon had realised how stupid this was, to forgive her, to be near her, and was going to instead wrap her hands around Harrow’s neck like she should - 

Instead she pulled back and blinked at Harrow, thumb tapping on the body of her nightdress. “Harrow. Are you wearing a bloody corset to bed?” 

She blinked. “... yes? It’s part of my nightgown.” 

“Your nightgown - Nonagesimus, how are you _breathing_ in that thing? You wear it to _sleep_?!” 

Somewhat embarrassed - because it _was_ a little silly, but she’d needed armour damnit, and the formal nightgown had seemed like the best option - she glared at Gideon. “Nav - how about.” She leant up, pressed a kiss to the mass of greyish paint that had smeared off her and onto Gideon’s face. “How about _I_ worry about my own nightclothes, and you get that top off.” 

“Harrow - no offence to you, magnificent umbral mistress, but of the two of us? I’m pretty sure I’m more experienced with undressing women and fucking them than you are.” 

She could feel her cheeks flush, spreading down across her chest in a rush of expanding blood vessels. “Hideous magazines don’t count, Griddle.” 

“I’m pretty sure they count more than any weird - bone boning you might have done.” 

This was both insulting, and wrong. Harrow, rather than settle for the usual verbal reprimand, leaned in and nipped the line of muscle over Gideon’s hyoid bone. She traced across the length of muscle she’d pressed her lips to and latched on, sucking as the neck arched. After an endless, beautiful moment, she tilted her head back with a gasp. “Gideon, take your _damn_ top off.” 

“Yes, my lady.” Gideon was panting, and her skin tasted of salt and smelled like sword polish. Harrow’s tongue slipped down her throat, C4 to C6, and Gideon groaned, hands curling around her like a promise. “M-my gloom queen - fuck!” _That_ outburst was in response to Harrow discovering she could feel Gideon’s pulse out with her teeth, without a single glance under her skin. Those agile hands rendered impotent, squeezing around her sides, pressing the ribs of the corset tight against her own ribs. “Harr-aaahah.” 

It was like music. It was like she was playing Griddle against herself all over again, but with all of the triumph and only a little of the pain and hatred. She cut a trailing line of teeth and tongue down Gideon’s skin to the shape of her manubrium and jugular notch, hands fumbling up over the planes of her body to the elasticated fabric of the bandeau. 

She managed to pull herself away from devouring Gideon long enough to say, “Arms up,” and then Harrow was pulling the top off and over, throwing it aside. Gideon’s breasts weren’t the sort that she no doubt slavered over in her magazines, but they were more than Harrow’s, more than the small curves of Harrow’s pale hands pressed against them, pressing and taking one stiff nipple between finger and thumb and twisting and lifting - 

“Ah! Fuck - that was bit too hard - gentler - ” 

Right, of course - she shifted the finger away and focused on her thumb, rubbing it across her nipple in what might have felt like an aimless circle if not for the vibrating hum from Gideon above her. She’d had a _plan_ for this, but it had evaporated like smoke at some point and she was stuck winging it, kissing down the upper slope of Gideon’s other breast. The hands on her back shifted up to the top of her nightgown and pulled it against her, undoing ties in their wake. Fingers brushed the ridges of her spine, and she couldn’t stop the noise she made against Gideon’s skin - not because it felt especially good but because it was any contact at all from something, someone she wasn’t in complete control of. 

They’d migrated back to both upright, kneeling on the bed. It shouldn’t have come as a shock that gravity did what gravity does and pulled the front of her nightgown forward and off Harrow’s shoulders, the top of her chest. Enough of a shock to be terror, as Gideon’s hands traced round her clavicle, pressing into the sparse soft flesh over her ribcage. 

“Idiot,” fell away from her mouth. “Brutish - useless - ” The last word dissolved into a hiss as Gideon’s fingers squeezed, as those rough calluses brushed nipples. Cutting off the hot masking fire of her insults, open in the barren warzone between them. 

Gideon didn’t say anything but she did laugh, small and delighted, like she’d just learnt a new trick with her sword. Her body pressed to Harrow’s and in the shock of flesh to flesh, Gideon’s lips were able to find Harrow where her mandible body met ramus, teeth sinking in before she laughed again. “That’s me. Brutish useless idiot, right here.” 

Harrow made a very undignified noise at that, but Gideon was already moving down, teeth scraping manubrium. When she took a nipple into her mouth it was like the release of energy at the completion of a theorem and Harrow found her teeth sinking into her own hand to swallow the scream the warmth of Gideon’s mouth had given her. 

She wasn’t able to swallow anything when Gideon’s mouth slid off her with a pop and _blew_ on the wet nipple. “ _Fuck!_ ” burst out of her like a body from a grave, and she wasn’t surprised when she looked down to see that the devil-girl was _smiling_ at her. “What the _fuck,_ Griddle?!” 

“You taste incredible.” Then into the silence that followed that odd, blurted, likely untruthful statement, “Was that okay? I thought - ” 

“ _Do it again_ ,” Harrow said, in an entirely reasonable tone of voice. 

“Right,” said Gideon. And then in a very Gideon way she decided not to obey a perfectly reasonable order, grinning up at her and saying, “So which thing am I doing again? Because if it’s the insulting myself then I haven’t really done that since you tricked me when we were five - ” 

Harrow finally did what she had longed to for hours, days, weeks, years, and fisted a tight hand in Gideon’s too bright red hair and forced that face into the unlovely bones of her body. 

She knew she wasn’t what - Gideon couldn’t really want _her_. She’d seen Gideon’s magazines. She wasn’t some large breasted woman in obscenely-cut Cohort red. She wasn’t one of the strange shapes from _Nearly Naked Nuns of the Ninth!!!_ and its many extraneous exclamation marks. She wasn’t even the half-dead corpse that was Dulcinea Septimus. 

Harrowhark Nonagesimus knew her torso only contained bones and a mausoleum, that all that lay inside her were two-hundred serried graves, too small and full, their dead crying out for a justice she could never achieve. She had told Gideon she was a war crime and she _meant_ it, she would call herself one _again_. 

But Gideon - stupid, headstrong, idiot Gideon who had been running from her all her life - stayed pressed to her chest, tilting her head into Harrow’s grip on her hair. Her mouth, her mouth was _devouring_ Harrow, eating her down to her wizened soul. She could feel the marks left in its wake, a maze of broken spilled blood crisscrossing under her skin. Suction and tongue tracing the labyrinths of it, freeing noises from Harrow’s chest that made her hand tighten further in her cavalier’s hair. 

This wasn’t - she’d wanted to... _to Gideon_ \- to try and do what she always did, chipping away at the debt she owed the universe. Owed _her_. But instead Gideon had her mouth wrapped round her breast, those amber eyes flashing up to meet hers, and, “Gideon, Gideon, _Gideon_ ,” fell from her mouth in the chanted rhythm of a prayer. 

“How do I get this corset _off_ you?” Gideon hissed into her skin - and that was far enough. 

With all the strength of her too short, too thin arms Harrow pushed Gideon back and away from her onto the bed, crawled from the covers like a monster from a crypt, and began kissing down the buried treasure of Gideon’s ribs, counting as she went. _One, two, three, four_ \- she placed a bite at the seventh and last true rib, then kissed lower still, onto the false ribs and the shifting muscles there whose names she wasn’t certain of. 

“ _God_ , Harrow, you’re going to fucking _kill_ me - ” Gideon’s voice went breathless as Harrow hooked her fingers into the edge of those trousers and placed a last, hard bite on the ridge of Gideon’s obliques. “All those other times trying to kill me and _this_ is actually going to do it - ” 

“I wasn’t trying to kill you, Nav,” Harrow snapped. “Or you’d be dead.” She shoved the part of her that wanted to add _and I couldn’t bear that_ right back down her throat. A kiss to the iliac crest as her fingers fumbled at the buttons. 

Then they were undone - she ripped them and underwear down Gideon’s rising hips in a jerky rush. She leant back in when they were half down, but a hand on her hair stopped her. 

“Take them all the way off.” Rough and sweet. Gideon’s pupils were blown so wide she could barely see them. “I want to wrap my legs around your head as I fuck your mouth.” 

It was an obscene thing to say. It was the sort of thing that would normally leave her making comments about Griddle’s manners. It was the sort of thing she had seeded constructs for, hurling them like salt over her shoulder in Gideon’s face. Here, it ripped a growl from out of her belly, clawing and pulling those trousers and underwear down further, away, _gone_. She didn’t even throw them off the bed. Parting those legs - Gideon had always said something stupid about ‘not doing leg day’, whatever that meant, but Harrow knew enough about bodies to know that you couldn’t do the ridiculous dashing about with blades that Griddle did without building up _some_ leg muscles, firm under her fingertips. 

And nothing could take away from Gideon’s bones, the line of tibia pressing against her hip, the femur holding the strength of the nineteen muscles attached to it in trembling check as she pressed a bite to them. 

Her destination was, perhaps predictably, topped with another shock of that too-red hair, damp and dripping onto the covers. Her fingers tangled in it and Gideon gave another one of those too-delighted laughs, cut off as Harrow’s fingers touched the pulsing lips of Gideon’s vulva. 

She pressed a kiss to the high point of the gracilis, suddenly overcome by nervousness at the prospect of giving Gideon _joy_ , and her total lack of experience with the subject. “If I - if I get it wrong.” Her lips were too dry. The paint had come off them entirely. “If it’s not good - ” 

“Nonagesimus. Are you saying you wished you had one of my magazines for guidelines?” 

Harrow resisted a very strong urge to hit her. Instead she hissed out an unhappy, “ _Griddle_.” 

The hand in her hair slid down to her face, cupping it and lifting it up. “I’ll help, okay? You’ll be fine. You’ll do fine.” A twitch of a smile. “Oh orgasmic lady of darkness.” 

“Stop, you moron,” Harrow said. But her mouth had attempted a smile, even as she said the words. She spread Gideon, the warm pink of her flesh unbearably alive, traced her fingers across it. The angle was _considerably_ different from the one she herself used, her pisiform pressing against her skin as she twisted her finger - and slowly, unbearably slowly, slid it inside. 

Gideon’s leg pressed round her back, calcaneus digging into Th8, their skeletons becoming one with only thin layers of protein between. “Fuck, _Harrow_. Harrow - ” Harrow shifted closer, changed the angle, and Gideon’s voice rose into a brief, wonderful scream. “ - inside me - need to - need you to touch my clit - _please_ \- ” 

She tilted her hand carefully to let her thumb find that nub of swollen flesh, circled it and enjoyed Gideon’s pants, the rolling motion of her hips. “Impatient.” 

“You’ve got a fing - aahhhh! - sh-shoved in my cunt, of course I’m - mm - impatient - ” 

The pain in her wrist was inconsequential in comparison to the warmth and wetness, the slow suction around her finger as she shifted it inside Gideon. She pressed another bite to the warmth of the thigh pressed tight against her face, increased the pace of her ministrations. It was only a short distance further to lean in even closer, the rich scent of Gideon permeating her being, and press a kiss to that heated flesh. 

“Fuck oh fuck, oh _fuck_ , you’re gorgeous, you’re incredible, you’re so - so fucking _good_ , you’re so _good_.” Harrow could feel Gideon’s torso curve up above her, that hand in her hair tightening and pulling the skin on her scalp taut as she babbled. “Osseous - tenebrous - dusk inamorata - eclipse - !” 

She couldn’t squash her own tiny laugh. “You’re ridiculous.” _Focus. Have to focus and make her feel -_ Harrow pressed a deeper kiss to her. She tasted bitter and too fucking sweet and like eighteen years of mistakes and fuckups disappearing like skeletonised blood. For Harrow, who found tea overwhelmingly flavoursome, it was sensory overload. She curled her tongue and explored those folds of flesh even as she continued to work her finger inside Gideon, trying to focus beyond the high of her taste. 

That heel ran across her ribs, sliding from one intercostal space to the next, and Gideon’s other foot joined it. “Add - add a second finger - ” She _whined_ , low and like a hurt animal, when Harrow obeyed. “God, goddamnit you’re way too good at this - aaah!” 

_Better than magazines_ thought some part of Harrow triumphantly, lifting the clitoral hood with her tongue, wrapping lips and teeth and suction around it. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.” 

… no, no wait, she shouldn’t have said that because her body was frozen, paralysed, and Gideon was staring at her with her mouth half-open and those gold eyes were frozen too - Harrow had said it wrong - 

“Come up here.” Gideon’s voice was too high, her pharyngeal muscles working. 

“I’m - I’m inside you and besides Griddle, it was just - an abstract statement. Nothing to be concerned about.” 

Her hand shifted to the back of Harrow’s head, untangling from her hair. “Come the fuck up here _right now_.” 

Slowly Harrow retreated back up the planes of Gideon’s body - not even a fighting retreat, she couldn’t even bring herself to press kisses to her as she rose to be face to face with her. Harrowhark had done what she always did and had taken a perfectly good thing and fucked it all up in a matter of seconds despite all her skill and knowledge. 

She couldn’t meet Gideon’s eyes 

Gideon cupped her face with both hands. “I am getting that fucking corset off you.” 

For a moment, Harrow was entirely nonplussed. Then - “You _suck_ , Griddle.” 

Gideon’s grin was wide and shit-eating. “I will in a sec if you get that damn nightie off.” 

“I thought - I thought I’d done something wrong, that I’d said something too _weird_ \- ” 

“Oh, you totally did, you dumb bone weirdo.” Gideon’s lips were chapped as they pressed to Harrow’s, and Harrow wasn’t too surprised to discover that kisses were hard while grinning wide like a lunatic’s skull. “I wasn’t even sure if you’d ever masturbated before today and it turns out all this time you were fucking yourself thinking about me, Gideon Nav - ” 

“You’re _intolerable_.” Harrow bit Gideon’s lip as hard as she could, grinding it between her teeth. “And who says I thought about _you_ anyway?” 

“Well, I suppose there _was_ Aiglamene - okay, okay, I get the point.” Their foreheads were pressed together, and her paint had smeared off totally onto Gideon. There was probably something very symbolic about that but right now Harrow was distracted by Gideon’s hands on the promontories of her scapulae, unlacing the ties and finding the clips, struggling for a moment before pulling them apart. Her nightgown crumpled into a pool around her knees, splitting from around her. 

“Griddle…” 

She pressed a kiss to the hollow behind Harrow’s clavicle. “One flesh. One end. Right?” 

There was a warmth swelling inside her frozen bones. “That’s not remotely what that means.” 

“So let’s rewrite it.” Gideon’s hands were gentle as they parted Harrow’s thin and sallow legs. “Together.” 

It was both easier and harder, finding the angle like this. Easier because it was closer to how Harrow touched herself. Harder because Gideon was keeping their foreheads pressed together, breath so warm against her face. Her hand was squeezing and pressed on Harrow’s thigh, crawling higher to slip a thumb into the crease of flesh between leg and torso. She’d only been distantly aware of her arousal before, in the same way she was of the rest of the processes of her body, but now it was insistent, undisputable, irritating. Like Gideon herself had clawed under her skin and into her endocrine and nervous systems, walking the halls of her body with cocksure swagger and vulnerability like she was Drearburh itself, the Ninth House unfolding and invaded. 

Her eyes shut, mouth parted, brushing along Gideon’s neck as her palm slid through that patch of still-damp hair. Gideon’s teeth closed on the shell of her ear, and fingers slipped higher along Harrow’s flesh, pressing to the incessant pulsing of her labia. 

They slid into each other in the same infinite moment. 

Harrow was - it wasn’t like when she touched herself and could anticipate the whole mechanism from beginning to end in flashes of awareness - her other hand clawed at Gideon’s broad back - Gideon’s finger _curled_ inside her; Harrow echoed her and was rewarded with a harsh breath against her neck followed by the warmth and wetness of a sucking kiss to the same spot. 

Still, Harrow was nothing if not used to Gideon being intrusive. Her mouth had latched around the shape of Gideon’s sternocleidomastoid. She focused on that, on its tense and flex under her teeth and tongue, and matched the rhythm of her fingers to it, shifting herself and the angle of her wrist so she could rub her palm into Gideon’s clitoris with each thrust. 

When had her hips started moving into Gideon’s hand? When had her breathing turned into moans - she was drenched in sweat she hadn’t skeletonised - “Don’t stop, don’t stop. Don’t stop!” 

“N-not about to - ah! Please, just one more finger - ” Gideon’s other hand was tangled in Harrow’s hair again, their breaths mingling from one open mouth into the other. Joined together. Harrow opened her eyes and worked a third finger into _her_ cavalier - _hers, only hers_ \- even as Gideon’s hand slowly emptied her out from within. 

Had to pay attention to what Gideon was enjoying. Learn. This angle of thrust - that brush of the muscle which formed the palm of her hand - couldn’t remember its name right now, not with Gideon, distracting awful beautiful Gideon’s walls clenching around her fingers, with her calluses inside her, with her thumb - 

Oh. Harrow was screaming. That was a little embarrassing. But she couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop herself from rolling her hips into Gideon, their bodies pressed tight together, couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Gideon, Gideon, _Gideon_ \- ” 

She came back to herself curled up on Gideon’s chest, coronal suture tucked into the line of Gideon’s mandible. She was distantly aware of the slick thick dampness still on her fingers, the comfortable sensitivity of her crotch, Gideon’s hand, warm and strong on her thigh. 

A moment of concern. “Did you - ?” 

“Before you did. Don’t think you noticed though.” Gideon’s fingers ran the space from twelfth rib to the flesh above the ilium wing of Harrow’s hip. “Think you got pretty busy yourself shortly afterwards.” 

A flush of guilt flowed through her, hot and sudden, and she tried to sit up. “I’m sorry - I was selfish again - ” 

“Nonagesimus.” Hands pulled her back down. “It was _fine_. Gimme like, five minutes, and we can try again, alright? I - really kind of want to taste you.” 

Harrow curled deeper into Gideon’s body. Closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth, and impossible closeness of it. “If you insist, Griddle.” 

“... it is a better way of being joined together, isn’t it?” 

Her eyes were open again. “ _Don’t_.” 

“Harrow.” Gideon’s hands were gentle on her. Too gentle. Almost close to vanishing. “You can’t rewrite what happened. No matter how bitter - ” 

“Am I not allowed to pretend?” 

Gideon was silent. Finally, she huffed out a breath. “Alright, mortuary daughter. Alright.” 

“Just for a while.” Harrow pulled Gideon tighter to herself, and pressed a kiss to the line of her throat. 

And prayed that, just for a while, she wouldn’t wake up.


End file.
